At the risk of inciting the Beyhive, I have to do it. I’m calling BS on a Beyonce meme. I have to say that with the disclaimer that I am not knocking Beyonce – not only do I love Beyonce, but I also am not the one to tear down another woman. Even still, it has to be said!
Beyonce is incredible. Not just incredible “for a woman,” but an amazing businessperson, and a mogul, no doubt.
But this meme really grinds my gears, so to speak, for many reasons:
I imagine that it was created by some well-meaning person as some type of “celebrities are just like us” or “get your rear in gear” sort of idea that makes an army of girlbosses want to pull up their bootstraps and build their empires.
However, part of the issue here is that it’s false.
I explain it in this video:
Basically, the reason I find myself calling BS on a Beyonce meme is that we DON’T really have the same number of hours in a day as Beyonce, because she has a staff. The hours that her staff spends working on things for her are all hours added to her day. If you had one person dedicating 8 hours of his or her day to you, that gives you 32 hours in that day, whether they’re doing your laundry, building your instagram following, sending out invoices for you, etc.
It could be so easy to look at Beyonce’s story (or anyone else’s) and think about how we don’t measure up. I get it. She and I are the exact same age (except maybe a couple hours difference) and I have thought “Dang, I am so far behind her in my journey!”
But then I remind myself of this, which is a screen capture from this video on the Goalcast facebook page.
Even then, she had someone dedicating their hours to her success. She had more hours in her day, because her dad was doing what he could to help her career, and every hour he spent doing that added an hour to her day!
Since I am blessed to have a virtual personal assistant, I actually have 24.5 hours in each of my days.
Someday, I hope to add even more!
EDIT/UPDATE: Since I wrote this, I saw someone else with a similar criticism of this quote/argument, and it pointed out my own privilege and something I take for granted – my car. I have taken public transportation many times, and it has almost always been an elective. Owning a car (even if it isn’t nice) is a huge benefit. I can’t imagine riding a bus to work every day!
I am sure there are plenty more things to add to the list, but wanted to be transparent and share when I had to put my own privilege in check!
So, the next time you see a similar meme and feel bad, remember that you don’t know what advantages (or disadvantages) that person has or didn’t have. It’s important to do our best not to compare journeys!
I also find this motivating to work toward adding more hours in my day (by delegating, which I encourage anyone who can do to do as much as they can!), whether that’s hours to build my career, hours to volunteer, or hours to have fun!
I think this is the type of thinking that gets the whole “hustle porn” movement more steam – that the only way to success is getting up at 4am and sacrificing everything else, and I’m simply not down with that.
However, if you want to maximize that time and impact, I have a couple things that can help out!
I made a blog post sharing some different productivity strategies that can hopefully help you work smart as opposed to hard!
I am working on a page of book recommendations from all of my past podcast guests, so that people have a great place to look for suggestions on what to read!
And, I have a facebook group where I share my favorite personal development and life improvement tips. Care to join?
What are your thoughts? Does this meme motivate you or make you feel bad?
xoxo,
Mandie
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